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Turnbull's chance for a fresh start
Malcolm Turnbull will play the lead role in his own re-make of Mission Impossible in 2017, complete with a cast of villains and traitors and no end of unpredictable subplots.
Michael Gordon is the political editor of The Age.
Malcolm Turnbull will play the lead role in his own re-make of Mission Impossible in 2017, complete with a cast of villains and traitors and no end of unpredictable subplots.
The picture this week was of a leader prepared to lose battles without even fighting them.
Peter Dutton found himself in unfamiliar territory this week, cast as the victim of the "tricky language" of Bill Shorten.
The people are driving America's malaise. The same can't be said in Australia.
The biggest concern about the plebiscite is the huge emotional toll it could take on young people seeing the legitimacy of their identity debated on the national stage.
Malcolm Turnbull's own backers fear they are witnessing the unfolding of a tragedy as epic as the one that destroyed Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
The plot was hatched under their noses, but they didn't see it coming. Not the ministers, who left the Parliament in blissful ignorance. Not the MPs, who did the same, or the party whips whose task is to instil discipline. And not the Prime Minister or his chief tactician, Christopher Pyne.
Let's rewind the clock. It's the Tuesday before polling day and Tony Nutt, Malcolm Turnbull's campaign director, rings his Labor counterpart with an offer George Wright could not refuse: a final leaders' debate on prime time TV.
There has been much discussion this past six months about whether we have been seeing "the real Malcolm" or a politician who has traded convictions and adopted a more conservative stance to secure the prime ministership.
The danger is that immense damage will be done to communities served by the CFA by pitting professional against volunteer.
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